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The Milpitas, Calif.-based company has been spending heavily on marketing and research and development while it faces pressure from new competitors and is defending itself following lackluster independent testing results in April. Wall Street investors, however, may be running out of patience. FireEye stock is down about 65 percent since its 52-week high of $97.35 and was trading down 6 percent Friday at $32.51.

Nearly every vendor is coming out with products designed to detect so-called advanced threats. and the attention once captured by FireEye and a handful of other vendors has spread to many other security firms, said Scott Fuhriman, a network security expert and vice president of sales and product development at Liberty Lake, Wash.-based TierPoint. Fuhriman, whose company partners with Fortinet, said a recent seminar conducted by TierPoint on advanced persistent threats saw significant attendance.

"It may be taking time for the marketing around APT defense to finally catch up to the customer base, but we're seeing a lot more interest in detection," Fuhriman said.

FireEye executives are responding to the increased competition. FireEye acquired Mandiant for $1 billion to add endpoint capabilities, threat intelligence and an incident response services arm. It spent more than $60 million on digital forensics firm nPulse in May. The company also added intrusion prevention capabilities to its platform and now sells threat intelligence and monitoring services. FireEye has consistently proven its efficacy in the marketplace, said Manish Gupta, FireEye's senior vice president of products, in a recent interview.

"I think today we market ourselves as a complementary solution to existing defense measures that customers have," Gupta said. "We do not encourage customers to replace their [antivirus] or their network-based IDS or IPS or email security solution."

Interest continues to grow in FireEye capabilities, including in the midmarket, prompting the vendor to create a new platform to address advanced threats for SMBs, said David Ladley, president and CEO of Park Ridge, Ill.-based systems integrator and FireEye partner Communications Finance. FireEye has been the fastest-growing product in the portfolio, Ladley said, adding that the company has treated its partners well.

"FireEye came to the game early and were sexy and new and do a fabulous job of marketing," Ladley said. "Now everybody is coming into the space with product to treat threat management or zero-day detection with sandboxing, and it's almost a feature now as opposed to just a product."